Pride and Prejudice

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Pride and Prejudice
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(No Transcript)
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Brief Life Story

• Jane Austen(1775-1817) was born in Steventon,
  Hampshire, where her father, Rev. George Austen,
  was a rector. She was the second daughter and
  seventh child in a family of eight.
• The first 25 years of her life Jane spent in
  Hampshire. On her father's unexpected retirement,
  the family sold off everything, including Jane's
  piano, and moved to Bath. Jane, aged twenty-five,
  and Cassandra, her elder sister, aged
  twenty-eight, were considered by contemporary
  standards confirmed old maid, and followed their
  parents.
• Jane was mostly tutored at home, but she
  received a broader education than many women of
  her time. She never married, but her social life
  was active and she had suitors and romantic
  dreams.
• Jane Austen started to write for family
  amusement as a child. Her earliest-known writings
  date from about 1787.Very shy about her writing,
  she wrote on small pieces of paper that she
  slipped under the desk plotter if anyone came
  into the room. Jane
• Austen's father supported his daughter's
  writing aspirations and tried to help her get a
  publisher.
• After her fathers death in 1805, she lived with
  her sister and hypochondriac mother in
  Southampton and moved in 1809 to a large cottage
  in the village of Chawton and remained there the
  rest of her life.

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Jane Austens House at Chawton
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Jane Austens Major Works(in order of
publication)

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1816)
• Northanger Abbey (1818)
• Persuasion (1818)

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The main Concerns of her Novels

• Her novels paint a realistic picture of the
  small circle
• of landed gentry in provincial England leading
  their apparently tranquil lives.
• All of her six novels deal with marriage
  mart--- the business of getting married. The most
  urgent preoccupation of her bright, young
  heroines is courtship and finally marriage.
• The England she depicts is one in which social
  
• mobility is limited and class consciousness
  is strong. Under such a social milieu, social
  advancement for women was usually through a
  successful marriage, which explains the
  pervasiveness of matrimony as a goal and topic of
  conversation in Austens writings.

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Pride and Prejudice

• First published in 1813, Pride and
  Prejudice has consistently been Jane Austen's
  most popular novel. It portrays life in the
  genteel rural society of the day, and tells of
  the initial misunderstandings and later mutual
  enlightenment between Elizabeth Bennet (whose
  liveliness and quick wit have often attracted
  readers) and the haughty Darcy. The title Pride
  and Prejudice refers (among other things) to the
  ways in which Elizabeth and Darcy first view each
  other. The original version of the novel was
  written in 1796-1797 under the title First
  Impressions, and was probably in the form of an
  exchange of letters.

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Main Plot

• The story centers around the Bennet
  family---Mr. Mrs. Bennet and their five
  grown-up daughters. Mrs. Bennets chief interest
  in life is to have her five daughters married to
  rich men, since under the law of the time, if Mr.
  Bennt dies one day, the family estate will pass
  on to his nearest male relation, a clergyman
  called Mr. Collins. At the beginning of the novel
  ,Mr. Bingley, a rich bachelor, moves to live near
  the house of the Bennets, and bring there his
  friend Mr. Darcy. Bingley falls in love with Jane
  ,the eldest daughter ,but was separated by
  Bingleys sisters as well as the disapproval of
  Darcy. Darcy belittles Elizabeth and hurts her
  dignity by refusing to dance with her. Later,
  however, he falls in love with Elizabeth for her
  wisdom, yet when he proposes marriage to her, he
  finds that she is prejudiced against him. Her
  dislike for him is increased by false information
  about him as well as by her misunderstanding
  .After many amusing incidents everything is
  cleared up, thus Darcy overcomes his pride and
  Elizabeth her prejudice and they are happily
  united. At the same time, Darcy brings back
  Bingley to Jane and they are also engaged. Thus
  the novel comes to its happy ending.

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Chapter One

• What happens in Chapter One?
• Mr. Bingley comes to Netherfield Park, an estate
  in the neighborhood where the Bennets live.
• The excitement in the Bennet family
• Mrs. Bennet urges her husband to call on Mr.
  Bingley immediately

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Chapter Two

• What happens in this chapter?
• Mr. Bennet torments his family by
  pretending to have no interest in calling on Mr.
  Bingley, but
• he actually visits Mr.Bingley without the
  knowing of his family. When he reveals to his
  family that he has made their new neighbors
  acquaintance, they are overjoyed and excited.

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Comment on the opening sentence of the novelIt
is a truth universally acknowledged ,that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must
be in want of a wife.

• It briskly introduces the arrival of Mr. Bingley
  at Netherfield Park, the event that sets the
  novel in motion
• This sentence also offers a miniature sketch of
  the entire plot, which concerns itself with the
  pursuit of single men in possession of a good
  fortune by various female characters. The
  preoccupation with socially advantageous marriage
  in the 19th century England society manifests
  itself here, because in claiming that a single
  man in possession of a good fortune must be in
  want of a wife, the narrator reveals that the
  reverse is also true a single woman, whose
  socially prescribed options are quite limited, is
  in ( perhaps desperate ) want of a husband.
• Rhetorically speaking, the sentence is an irony.
  There is an ironic difference between the formal
  manner of the statement and the ultimate meaning
  of the sentence.

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Characterization of Mr. Mrs. Bennets

• Mr. Bennet quick-minded, sarcastic, humorous,
  reserved, capricious.
• Mrs. Bennet a woman of mean understanding,
  little information and uncertain temper,
  self-pitying, snobbish, vulgar in taste.